And it should be clear *why* taking office should be time-based, not oath-based when you consider what might happen during wartime. Like, what if serious military shit was hitting the fan on the day of the inauguration? Under an oath-based system, the incoming president would probably have more pressing things to do then swear an oath on a bible. With a time-based system like we now have, it is very clear who is in power at all times. Oath-based, not so much.

Before that amendment was passed, the incoming president would have to drop everything and get sworn in before deal with whatever. Lets not even forget that if he or she did something requiring executive privilege and wasn't technically sworn in. During the aftermath, without the amendment, everything the new president did prior to taking the oath would fall into question (i.e. were they technically president)?

No, taking the the oath is more for show then a requirement. As it should be.

He's also the same Chief Justice who screwed up the recitation of the oath, which is one of the most well-known passages in the Constitution. Wouldn't surprise me if he thought the President wasn't the President until the oath of office was administered. He's a special one, that Roberts.

How is this informative? The Clinton staffers didn't do it at all. It was thoroughly debunked within a month of the allegations coming out. And former President George W Bush himself stated specifically that it did not happen.

What do we need as evidence? A specific letter from Dick Cheney that it didn't happen? The not signed with the blood of former AG John Ashcroft? At some point it becomes paranoid delusion, and I think we've hit that point.

Or that firing US Attorneys is something that only Bush did and it is unprecedented.

Nice try, Karl Rove. The way that Bush did it is unprecedented, because only certain Attorneys were fired. Clinton, for example, fired ALL 90-something of them. There's a fine line between sweeping out everyone, and sweeping out just the ones that aren't "loyal Bushies". That phrase in quotes alone ought to make you throw up in your mouth a little bit, if you have any respect for what these people are supposed to do.

Wait, what? That's a wide net to throw. For instance, look at the transition from Washington to Adams. It was smooth as silk.

How does Washington to Adams even qualify as a "transition"? That's as much a transition as the "transition" from Reagan to Bush Sr. was, in every sense (Adams was Washington's vice president, for one).

The first transition of power ever in the U.S. was in 1800, also known as "Revolution of 1800".

Maybe casting this as the "smoothest transition ever" is a somewhat large claim to make, but compared to the liberal media claiming Cheney was the worst VP in history (never mind that there were a few before Cheney with actual criminal convictions) or Bush was the worst president in history, this is nothing but a fishing pole, not even a net.

How does Washington to Adams even qualify as a "transition"? That's as much a transition as the "transition" from Reagan to Bush Sr. was, in every sense (Adams was Washington's vice president, for one).

Uh, no. They aren't really analogous at all. Do remember that for quite some time after the Constitution was established, the Vice President was the second place contender in the Presidential election, not someone who ran and was elected with the President. So Adams, as Washington's Vice President, had a very different relationship to Washington than Bush, as Reagan's VP, had to Reagan.

The first transition of power ever in the U.S. was in 1800, also known as "Revolution of 1800".

But, by your own argument about the 1797 transition, that should have been an easy transition, just like Reagan->Bush, simply because Jefferson was Adams' Vice President.

Of course, the "but he was his predecessors VP, so it doesn't count" argument doesn't apply to the 1801 transition for the same reason it doesn't apply to the 1797 transition.

Well, first let me start off by saying you are exactly right in saying George W. Bush's administration was exemplary when it came to helping the transition to Obama.

However, you may not be aware that many if not all of the stories of Clinton adminsitration vandalism were fabricated. The GSA, which administers the resources in question, found no evidence for any of the allegations. Likewise, the GAO, a congressional agency, initially found no support for any of the allegations. It reopened its investigation under political pressure from Bob Barr, and eventually revised its opinion to $15,000, not $250,000.

Furthermore, even this lower figure is based on Bush staff recollections. For example, there is no actual documentation that the "historic doorknobs" bearing the presidential seal actually existed; in fact there was no mention of these anywhere until after the investigation was reopened by the Republican Congress.

But of course, that is not proof that such doorknobs didn't exist, or that Clinton staffers didn't steal them. It just means even the $15,000 figure is hard to document. And there is no evidence at all for stories like the Clinton staffers defecating on desks. Since this would have to have been cleaned up, it certainly would have left a paper trail.

Make of that what you will, but even the Republican's own investigation showed that the claims were at the very least wildly exaggerated.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."

FDR did not take us out of the Depression. Japan did that when they bombed Pearl Harbor and gave the nation motivation to start building tanks and planes and ships and bombs non-stop for the next three years.

Someone mod parent up please. I hate it when people try to claim WWII got us out of the depression. I mean should we be thankful we have the Afghan and Iraq war? If it weren't for those two wars, would the economy really be in the shitter? I think not.

I think that's twice in as many days I've seen mis-application of the broken window fallacy.

The broken window fallacy assumes that resources are fully employed. The argument would be that, were it not used to wage war, U.S. industrial capacity would've been doing something else -- something more productive. The problem is, it wasn't being used for something more productive during the depression.

There are perfectly good arguments for why war is not the cure-all for a national economy that many cynics claim. In the context of the Great Depression, the broken window fallacy is not one of them.

That research dates from the era when John Maynard Keynes was still out of fashion.;-)

You can tell by the faith in the unerring, benevolent effectiveness of the market's "self-correcting forces". Which is not to say that markets don't self-correct, over a sufficiently long timescale, when every grain of human economic irrationality to the contrary has been ground into dust. Keynes, like Socrates, was not so much brilliant at being right was being brilliant at figuring out how wrong conventional wisdom is.

2007 was probably the high water mark of the post Reagan anti-Keynes movement that believed that government intervention only slowed down the market's marvelous rapid self-correction powers. Somehow, though, those powers didn't work for Hoover, but nobody wants to talk about him.

Having set up the streaming watching at a university, I can tell you that Foxnews.com had the best quality stream by a mile. Of course they probably had significantly better demand. I ended up having to use 3g cards on laptops because the internal network collapsed. And we have dark fiber...60000 users trying to stream at their desks is a bad thing.

o Issue at least one executive order to strike down one of the myriad unconstitutional laws violating the bill of rights

Imho he can't do that, he can veto before signing but once it becomes law of the land only either the Supreme Court or Congress can do anything about it.

o Issue at least one executive order to have a supreme court judge arrested... (snip)
o Issue at least one executive order to have a congressman arrested.. (snip)

Have you heard about "separation of powers"? The President can't do anything against the other two powers, they are independent. I believe the procedure in the constitution is called impeachment. That would not have stop Dick Cheney from trying thought:-p

It doesn't even outline what the supreme court is supposed to do. What strict constitutionalists fail to realize is that the constitution is not a document written by a group of well meaning men with no political bias or agenda. Quite the opposite, it's the product of intense political bargaining. the 3/5ths Majority, the Missouri compromise, the commerce compromise... This document that we are governed by is meant to try to appease both federalists(with clauses stating that Congress has the power to provide for "general welfare" as well to do everything "necessary and proper" to do that. This is balanced by the 10th amendment placating antifederalists. The founding fathers did not have you in mind when they wrote the Constitution, they had their own interests and agendas in mind.

We know what the constitution, read literally, says. We just disagree what it actually *means*.

My interpretation? The constitution is the framework in which we have debates in this country. It defines *how* we deal things, not *what* those things we deal with should be.

There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research". Same with gay marriage. Same with giving blacks and women the right to vote. The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.

(and a healthy one too). My opinion? We simply cannot be competitive as a nation with a "weak" federal government in concert with "strong" state governments. There has to be a balance, yes. But one must realize that our competition doesn't want to negotiate with 50 little states, they want to negotiate with a single big one. I suppose, though cannot back it up, that this was the logic behind the formation of the EU--each country just couln't compete in a modern global market so they had to unite.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The wording of this amendment is intentionally vague. If it was overly strict, the constitution would quickly become irrelevant as the times changed. For example, what if the constitution was formed when people thought radio was a novelty and they included "the federal government should not regulate radio". You and I might not agree with everything about the FCC, but you have to admit that it would be a mess if every state had it's one mini-FCC regulating our radio spectrum. And if the language in the constitution was as strong and strictly worded as "no radio", you'd need to re-amend the constitution to overturn such a ill-thought piece of legislation.

Hell, what if that amendment said "The federal government should not create nor regulate the roads used by horseless carriages"? No highway system would have been built.

The constitution is vague for a reason. Democrats vs Republicans vs Libertarians are not debates about "are you loyal to the constitution", but really debates carried out under the constitution about how to deal with modern issues. The constitution is what gives us the ability *to* debate the issues.

My opinion? We simply cannot be competitive as a nation with a "weak" federal government in concert with "strong" state governments.

In that case, then the 10th amendment should be changed, not ignored. It is bad to have laws, and especially parts of the constitution, that are ignored.

Just saying that the 10th amendment doesn't really apply to the current world is a bad precidient. Does that mean that congress can start making laws abridging the freedom of speech, establish a state religion, since we can't be "competitive" with those restrictions on the federal government?

But the constitution did not explicitly say "whether you're a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight", did it? I mean, even read literally, it doesn't matter what the constitution says if you don't consider blacks to be humans.

The fourteen amendment was only created after the civil war, don't forget. We fought a war with ourselves to resolve that issue.

As long as a Gay man can do what a straight man can do (marry someone of the opposite sex) then they have the same rights. The blacks and so on were actually barred from marrying into interracial marriages at one time which is completely different then gay marriage.

... what?

As long as a black man can do what a white man can do (marry someone of the same race) then they have the same rights.

Gays already have the same rights everyone else has, they can marry a person of the opposite sex. The blacks and so on were actually barred from marrying into interracial marriages at one time which is completely different then gay marriage. As long as a Gay man can do what a straight man can do (marry someone of the opposite sex) then they have the same rights. Lesbians are the same (marry a man). The fact that they don't want to or want to do something else. The 14th doesn't apply to that situation.

By your exact same logic, banning interracial marriage is Just Fine, since black men have exactly the same rights as white men - they can marry someone of their own race.

Lucky for us, it was quickly decided that the way that is phrased is ridiculous, as it's always possible to put some "separate but equal" bullshit spin on any sort of discrimination to make it sound like it's fair.

In other words, you're arguing against your own point by making the connection to interracial marriage (which, by the way, is exactly the comparison we should be making, IMO, as the situations are depressingly similar). The question that we should be asking is "Can gay men do what straight women can do?", not "Can gay men do what straight men can do?"

In any case, the government should get the hell out of the marriage business anyways, and only offer civil unions. And yes, these should be offered to any adult, regardless of sex or preference, and probably regardless of prior arrangements (in other words, yup, the government probably should allow polygamous civil unions, apart from religious objections there's really no reason the contractual engagements such a thing implies should be limited to one pairing per person). Leave marriage as a religious commitment, which is what it really should be. Then the religious aspect of the debate can be settled in its proper place, on a church-by-church basis, with no spillover into the rest of the country.

Of course, since that will never happen, the only reasonable solution is to allow gays to marry. And yes, this would seem to imply that the next slide down the slope would be polygamy, but fear not - polygamists are so underrepresented in this country (plus they're too intimately related to child polygamists) that they'll never be able to kick up enough fuss to get their way. But trust me, even if gay marriage is not settled in favor of the gays within the next 10 years or so, it will happen within 20 or 30 - the generation coming up right now just doesn't hold the same anti-gay sentiment that their parents still do, much like their parents didn't hold the same level of anti-black sentiment that their parents did.

There will be holdouts and they'll complain about their rights (um...the "right" not to be disgusted by seeing people doing things they think are immoral, I suppose?) being trampled, but they'll just have to learn to deal with it, and soon enough they'll die off and the rest of the people will never look back. Within a couple generations, people will look back with amusement on the fact that we even had to have this discussion.

Homosexual people find themselves in exactly the same position "interracial" marriages found themselves decades ago: with state governments curtailing their freedoms to pursue happiness as they see fit.

The time will come when people will not understand how such barbaric impositions were in place.

Most of We The People wouldn't know the Constitution from the holes in their asses, pick and choose the parts of it they want to pay attention to and modify the meaning of other parts to their liking, or simply don't care what it has to say in the first place.

Coincidentally, you could say the exact same thing about the Bible. Of course, many people seem to think the Bible is also a governing document of this nation, so I suppose it's fitting that they would treat the two the same way.

Did you have something in particular in mind? I ask because a lot of "limit the government" types have curious ideas about what the constitution authorizes and forbids.

It really depends if you what view of the commerce and general welfare clauses, as well as the enumerated powers being exhaustive.

"Curious" isn't the view. They limited-government types are interested in a limited government. Too often, when society changed to the point that some people view government powers need expansion, necessitating a Constitutional amendment, they opt instead to ignore/reinterpret the founding document. This has two effect: that part of the document is neutered by the rerouting and the document becomes more distant to current realities instead of being amended in a sufficient manner - so that once it's proposed to follow it, the old interpretation seems "quaint" and out-of-touch.

I'm not sure about you, but I think government running a trillion dollar deficit, bailing out businesses/people left and right is hardly limited.

I don't know. I'm just suddenly very pessimistic about the whole thing. Guantanamo is probably a step in the right direction... but when you're talking about a journey (of a committee, mind you, since it's not just the president running the country), it's going to be so easy for steps in the wrong direction to occur.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an American. Proudly so. I voted for Obama. But I just wonder... what, really, can he do? What will he do? And in the end, will most of us be happier about it?

I think one of the most amazing things about it all is how the replacement of one individual can really change the mood of so many people. Not just in the USA, but in the whole world. It's incredible how despite of all the bad decisions made over the previous administration, citizens of so many other countries are willing to give America the benefit of the doubt.

I believe that we should show some gratitude for that willingness to forgive, and we can express that gratitude by tempering our cynicism, and giving the new administration a decent chance to try some things. I think that a large portion of the country is willing to do so, hopefully the obstructionists can be drowned out by people who still feel that it's worthwhile to be hopeful.

But either way, if Obama tries to do even 5% of what he's said he wants to do, I'm having a hard time imagining how things could be run much worse than what we've survived through for the past eight years.

And if you think that it was just the last eight years that got us to this point in history than you have no idea how bad things can get.

Our current sitution is the build up from decades worth of neglect, folks. And in most likeliness a lot of the Americans reading this post played some part in it. It sounds ugly because it is ugly. But it's still true.

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry. I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron, but it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you, doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own. It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audeince we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours. As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you want to have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in againstHitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it! It's very nice.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note. Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

Well, his cabinet doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies. But I am neither optimist or pessimist, only pragmatist. The Obama administration, like any before it, has a lot of people shouting lots of contradictory things at it and within it, monied interests expecting favors and grassroots movements struggling for recognition, and a whole mess of problems to which maybe no one actually yet has the right answer.

Time will tell if the new executive can sort all these out better than the last one did. Although the odds do look better this time.

Let's face it, none of us knows what he will do or if it will work. We looked at the choices available and made a decission, some with our minds and some with our hearts. Personally, I voted for Obama because his public stances agreed with mine on most issues while he also appeared intelligent and elequent.

The decisions he's announced (and that have been leaked) so far seem to validate my decision. More money spent on infristructure (both digital and physical), closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison, and denouncing harsh interrogation practices are all good places to start.

That being said, our nation and our world is in for a tough decade which will undoubtably involve countless difficult decissions. Like many difficult decisions, I fully expect some of them to have no 'right' answer, no easy solution, no quick fix. Undoubtably, I will be dissapointed with some of his choices, but I have no way of knowing how many or what the end result of those decisions will be.

After first cutting off Obama, he forgets to say "faithfully" in the pledge, then tacks it onto the end of the clause. Obama clearly recognizes the screwup and pauses where "faithfully" is supposed to go, letting Roberts correct himself. Roberts stumbles, realizing his mistake. Corrects it, sort of. Then Obama continues with Roberts' original phrasing.

To anyone not overly familiar with Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, it looked like Obama was confused- or stumbled, but he was just in shock to hear Roberts put things out of order.

Okay, I'm not a Roberts fan, but let's be real. The Roberts administered the oath, got nervous, Obama handled it gracefully, and the job is done. Roberts goes back to not having to speak in front of a ridiculously large number people.

I expect that the abuse Roberts will get from Antonin Scalia alone will be more than enough punishment for getting nervous while administering the oath.

To anyone not overly familiar with Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, it looked like Obama was confused- or stumbled, but he was just in shock to hear Roberts put things out of order.

Don't worry. I certainly don't have the oath memorized, but it was clear to me that it was Roberts who had messed up.

I hope Obama is a faithful to the wording of the rest of the Constitution as he is to that one section. It would be nice to have a Democrat who believes in following the law rather than claiming that a "living breathing constitution" gives him an excuse to do whatever seems convenient at the time.

You know, as a geek and an American who's concerned with his personal privacy, there was a single issue which I really took to heart during GWB's presidency and that was telecom immunity (a retroactive law mind you). When Obama went back and ended up supporting it and then continued to support it even into his presidency [wired.com], I really had to take the whole "Change" mantra with a big grain of salt.

While I have been watching my Twitter log scroll by with people saying they are in tears over this historic moment and the supposed changing of the guard as President Bush left office, I just have to wonder how much really will "Change". And obviously, at least one very important issue, which should be a priority of all Americans, is being overlooked because someone is promising a whole bunch of shit which probably doesn't matter much.

Yet, something which goes against the Constitution is going to be swept under the rug as not all that important because we have a great speaker who appeals to the masses with his great voice, speeches that blow the out-going fool's away, and his supposed "fit" chest as was shown round the world via the media's obsession with the man.

I'm all for a new leader, God knows we needed someone better than GWB 4+ years ago. But man, "Change" is relative I guess. YMMV.

I didn't say I didn't question it. I don't believe a word any politician says but I have *never* witness the number of people following along with the campaign promises of a candidate/president like they are with Obama. Even people I would normally believe to be levelheaded are acting like 13 year old girls after their first kiss.

I don't know what to be more frightened of, Bush's right-wing, conservative, religion wackos or the mass of people that Obama has mobilized into believing that something will be vastly different with him in charge.

He used the words "data" and "statistics" in his inaugural address in a positive tone, without being the slightest bit derisive. He said that he would, "restore science to its rightful place." There is hope for the US.

I found the religious overtones of the ceremony quite disturbing. If he really wanted to reaffirm the separation of church and state he could have started there and then by doing away with the bibles, the preachers and the 'so help me Gods'.

I noticed an odd fact in the prayer before the inaugurations. The qualities ascribed to God were that he is "one" and he is "compassionate." This seems to be a subtle reaching out to Muslims right there, since those are the qualities of God emphasized in Islam: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Say (O Muhammad), He is God, the One God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not begotten, nor has been begotten, and equal to Him is not anyone." He could have mentioned salvation or the Trinity or other divisive attributes instead. When he does mention Jesus, he gives the name in several languages including, I think, Arabic. Probably to remind Americans that Jesus is not a property of the U.S. and remind Muslims that the prophet Jesus is honoured in Islam. Finally, he ends with the Lord's Prayer which, as well as being blessedly short, is something that no Christian denomination has trouble with.

Just an observation: the reaching out to Muslims started before the Inaugural Speech.

... of hearing "black this" and "Afro-American that" and he just became President. I just hope that the media (and America) can finally get over this whole "race" thing and let the guy do his job. For an election that wasn't supposed to be about race, we sure do hear a lot about it. To Obama: America and the world is watching - MAKE US PROUD!

I agree and find it odd that the media has gone on and on about it while invoking MLK at the same time. Personally I think MLK would be disappointed that minority voters only felt compelled to stand up and have their votes counted because the candidate was of a minority race. I think King's real dream was that people didn't let the race aspect hold them back from being a participant in the system. Just like I'm sure he'd frown on the idea that people used the excuse of finally having a minority in the White House be a reason they suddenly feel they could do anything. People who really get his message should have felt this way all along.

I just don't see this as the milestone the media claims it is and I'd like to think if Dr. King was alive today he'd agree with me on this.

I disagree. And that's historically been one of the big problems with really tackling the issue of racism, both in the USA and worldwide. We can't just magically jump to a point where race doesn't matter any more. And pretending that we can by trying to ignore the issue of race altogether is not going to work. There's just too many social and economic realities that are woven directly into race for the issue to just disappear and work itself out.

There's been some interesting stories over the past couple months about how many European countries have always considered themselves far more progressive in terms of race than the US, but are now being forced to realize that a minority citizen would never be elected to their highest offices. They haven't solved racism any more than the USA has, they merely did a better job of pretending that it wasn't an issue.

The demographics and particulars of American history have kept racism a bit more apparent in the US, and as a result, we've worked through it to the point where we now have a black man in the oval office. Things have often times been messy and ugly along the way, but that's how progress generally goes.

Ideally, we want race to be a non-issue in our civilization. But race is a big deal. And it'll have to become a bigger deal before it can become an non-issue. That's just how it works.

I think the thing I'd most like to see is a tempering of the utter insanity that is the TSA. We aren't safer because we have to take off our shoes to board an airplane. We aren't safer because we make pilots go through metal detectors. We aren't safer because we're now required to having a driver's license to fly. We aren't safer because we aren't allowed to take our toothpaste (except in teeny tiny tubes) with us. The TSA spends so much time and energy policing our shampoo container size that it can't help but detract from their ability to actually catch potential bombs. Obama has spoken about changing our foreign response to September 11th, but I'd like to see a change in our domestic response as well. I'd like to see more common sense.

That's what I want to see. Too long has the government attempted to fight the free market by throwing money at enforcement. We've spent too many billions on punishing otherwise nonviolent, law-abiding taxpayers. For all the time and treasure we've spent, is there any end in sight? Is there anyone who believes that drug enforcement is reducing the demand for drugs?

In Mexico right now, we've got drug cartels fighting a paramilitary war with the police and Mexican army; that's ongoing. In California, we have national parks and public water supplies being polluted by unregulated growing operations.

We have an out of control national debt, and an opportunity to create a domestic industry, tax it, and stop spending the billions on enforcing these out of date laws. Pretending what we're doing is working, or pretending the problem doesn't exist, doesn't change the facts of the situation. The longer we wait, the more powerful the organized crime syndicates get (just like the mob during alcohol prohibition).

Tax it, regulate it, don't sell it to minors, and bust people for driving under the influence of it. Just stop pretending you can beat it by cracking down on suppliers or users; supply exists where demand exists, and demand will always exist, because people are human.

Don't forget industrial hemp, too, because there's a lot that could be done with it. That would be a huge boon to the country, especially considering that we need new energy mediums and materials for various applications; hemp has one of the longest track records in human civilization as a useful industrial material, and prohibiting it because of marijuana is simply pointless.

That's why I want to see Prohibition 2.0 (hemp/marijuana) ended. I'd also like to see a complete end to the War on Drugs, because like the War on Terror, it's not a war we can ever win. But, that's another post for another time.

Looks like they've already got a Technology Agenda [whitehouse.gov] posted. This is change I can stand behind. Believe in? When I see it in action. Don't let this make us any less vigilant in protecting our freedom to share information in an open and uninhibited manner.

Who was that announcer? He sounded like the "Let's Get Ready To Rumble" guy. I half expected him to announce "In this corner, President Elect Barack H. Obama. In that corner, Chief Justice Roberts. Let's get ready to INAUGURAAAAAAAATE!"

I did the the old fashion way, and went home for a bit and watched on my TV. It's times like this where the internet just isn't setup to handle. TV is great at distributing the same stream to million and millions of people. While the Internet is built around the concept of everyone having a unique connection to services.

Go to Obama/Biden's issues site [barackobama.com] and flip through the plans. There are a few measurable details here and there on this site. Like his statement about Iraq:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 â" more than 7 years after the war began.

He better have a really good reason for not starting to redeploy brigades from Iraq with an end goal of 16 months. A really good reason.

For us tech minded geeks, his fact sheet [barackobama.com]--including:

Protect the Openness of the Internet

And if I don't see him take the steps he talks about in that plan, I'm going to quickly realize he's just another lying politician. Here's another point that needs to be reprinted all over:

Open Up Government to its Citizens: The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive, closed
administrations in American history. Our nation's progress has been stifled by a system corrupted by millions of
lobbying dollars contributed to political campaigns, the revolving door between government and industry, and
privileged access to inside information--all of which have led to policies that favor the few against the public
interest. An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level
of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens. Technology-enabled citizen
participation has already produced ideas driving Obama's campaign and its vision for how technology can help
connect government to its citizens and engage citizens in a democracy. Barack Obama will use the most current
technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and
promote citizen participation in government decision-making. Obama will integrate citizens into the actual
business of government by:

Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use
of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities. Greater access to
environmental data, for example, will help citizens learn about pollution in their communities, provide
information about local conditions back to government and empower people to protect themselves.

Establishing pilot programs to open up government decision-making and involve the public in the work
of agencies, not simply by soliciting opinions, but by tapping into the vast and distributed expertise of
the American citizenry to help government make more informed decisions.

Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct
the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet
as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. He will ensure that these
proceedings are archived for all Americans to review, discuss and respond. He will require his
appointees to employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also
to participate and be heard in these meetings.

Restoring the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available,
scientifically-valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials.

Do you believe that there is any difference between the best Presidents we've had and the worst?

If you say "yes", then change is possible.

If you say "no", then change is not possible.

I say that there is a HUGE difference between the best and the worst. But the problem is not just the Presidency. The best President can be hampered by the worst Congress. Obama may be a good President. He may even be a great President. But he's hampered by Congress. And I believe that this Congress is one of the worst.

But do you want a government who will make sure there's a hospital to fix your broken skull? And a government who will make sure there's quick transportation and trained EMTs?

Hard to say. Some argue that such services wouldn't exist if the government weren't providing them, but that's not necessarily true. Firefighting services in the unincorporated county lands where my father lives in Arizona are largely subscription funded. You call the fire department because your house is on fire and you haven't paid for the service, they do show up... but only to make sure everyone's out of the house and your service-paying neighbor's house doesn't burn down. You can beg and throw cash at them, but they'll watch your house burn down. Hard to say to what degree this approach could be applied to emergency medical services. Actually, it already is that way, to some degree. Here in Los Angeles they'll haul you to the closest hospital, but if they find out you have no insurance, you'll be given the minimum medical attention necessary to stabilize you, then you'll be thrown in an ambulance and driven up to forty miles to County-USC hospital--- the only remaining public hospital--- to wait for hours in line next to all the other poor folks waiting to have their stabs, gunshots, and assorted poor-folk injuries taken care of on the county's dime.

I disagree with your view. Why let people hype it all up, and let people 'believe', when all that's going to happen is a huge disappointment. Speculation is what gets the markets in huge trouble, because eventually a correction comes and reality hits, and hits hard. So by your very logic, we shouldn't have tried to do anything with all those speculators on the market, we should have let them keep dreaming of limitless profits... NOTHING BAD HAPPENED, right??? But I guess my example is flawed, since giving people who are drowning in debt, with shitty job prospects at best, a fantasy of everything changing for the better will not end up in even more heartache and suffering in the long run when reality sets back in...

Making Obama into some saviour is just asking for trouble. He can't deliver, not for lack of trying, I'll give you that, but he cannot deliver, the system can't let him. And when he doesn't, and Americans realize that there isn't some magical new president that's gonna make all their problems go away, there's gonna be major backlash.

Of course, please, don't take my word for it... just go to google, or wiki, and look up what happend to other countries who went through similar leadership changes, where the populous believed the new leader would fix all. Scary shit. So letting the delusions of idealism flourish without a reality check is simply going to result in way more sting when reality finally hits home... and it always hits home.

Yes, I know it's a bold thing to liken Obama to Kennedy and King but, I'm sorry, I get flashes of both great men when I watch Obama speak. He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.

If you believe he's just another politician; if you believe he's going to be a big flop and disappoint and all that garbage, do yourself a favour and, more importantly, do everyone around you a favour and shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. You're allowed to have them and I won't take that away from you but, at a time when people are filled with hope and idealism, let them be. Don't try to shatter that hope.

Sure he inspires. Yes King inspired. Kennedy inspired. So did Mussolini and Jim Jones [wikipedia.org]. They also filled people with hope.

The fact that he talks well doesn't imply good or evil. It merely makes him more capable of doing whichever he chooses to do. I hope you don't mind if I keep my eyes and mind open, and speak when I see things happening that disturb me. A failure to speak up can shatter hope too.

He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.

So do faithhealers, used car salesmen, and other con artists. I purposely avoided listening to the speeches of Obama, McCain, and the man for whom I ultimately voted, Nader, so I was not swayed by their charisma. I read speeches the day after, and Obama's have just been vague ramblings about hope and change with absolutely no substance. When you remove his gazes, body language, and pauses-for-effect, there's just nothing left. There was even an article on here a while back about how researches measured "spin" (ie, lying) and found Obama to have the most in his speeches.

I have instead looked at their actions, or lack thereof in Obama's case. He's done little to nothing of significance in his career besides be black and has consistently supported the rights and interests of corporations over the interests of the American people. For those of you who think he's to going to make great changes, please point to ONE thing he has done, not said.

Removing "dont ask don't tell" and changing it to "tell, who cares". Obama is pro-gay, but he isn't beholden to just the gay community either. He is beholden to every citizen in the country, regardless if they voted for him. If he picked some openly gay pastor, you'd be happy but Obama would have pissed off another segment of our country.

But seriously, I might not agree with Mr. Warren's views and I might not be of the same faith as he, but you have to admit he gave a hell of a prayer.

However, I am not at all giving Obama any slack on his bigotry about gay marriage and his choice of Rick Warren as a pastor during the inauguration.

So Obama picked a popular yet controversial minister to give the prayer at his inauguration. That does not necessarily mean that Obama shares his views. Part of new administration that Obama has said he would bring would be inclusion especially to opposing viewpoints. That is vastly different from the "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" and the "you're not a patriot if you disagree with the administration" view that we've had the last 8 years.

Which is the greater benefit: saving 340 homes at $500,000 each, or giving 2 million attendees hope for the future with a big ceremony? Given the degree to which consumer spending props up American GDP, the inauguration may actually MAKE money.

You know, that's one of the funny things I see when looking at America from some thousands of kilometres away.

So supposedly, the sacred right to bear arms is there to keep the government in line, in case it oversteps its constitutional bounds. Lemme see, the Bushies did:

- effectively suspending habeas corpus,

- used torture,

- starting a war of aggression, and justified it by

- outright lying about the evidence, (plus, see two paragraphs above, it turns out that all the "witnesses" they had, had been waterboarded until they said what the Bushies wanted to hear,)

- massive surveillace of its own citizens, down to data-mining grocery bills,

- politicizing every branch of the government they could lay their hands on,

- trying to keep official emails from the _legal_ mandated openness, by using private accounts for government business, or by just making excuses (apparently they didn't make backups, ya know)

- saying out loud that the constitution is just a piece of paper and doesn't apply to them,

Etc.

Did I see the gun-loving right at least hinting about the possibility of a revolt over it? (Yes, at the end of the series of other boxes, but still.) Nah, they voted for him again.

But here comes a president which at least promises to undo some of that evil, and restore at least _some_ of those constitutional rights. (Whether he'll keep that promise, remains to be seen.) What does the gun-loving right immediately fear? "OMG, he might take our guns away."

It seems to me that the gun lovers care _only_ about exactly _one_ piece of the constitution: the second amendment. No more, no less. Wipe your ass with the rest constitution if you will, they sure won't mind it. So exactly how does that work as a constitutional safeguard, then?

Left-wingers might have an irrational fear that a police officer will shoot them dead

There are more arrests for marijuana possession in this country than there are arrests for violent crimes. It is a fact that the police victimize more people than they protect. Fearing the police is not irrational at all.